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DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



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DF THE UNITE n STATES; 



AT THE STATED MEETING, 



Thursday; NavEintiBr 3rd; IBB 7; 



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/lajop Geop<jG i. Ciohl^orsy. 



RESOLUTION UNANIMOUSLY ADOPTED. 

Resolved, That the address of Governor Anthony be spread on the 
records of the Commandery,and printed, and that a copy be sent to each 
member of the Commandery and to each Recorder of every Commandery 
in the United States. 



IN EXCHAKOfr 

t2My'06 






.2. 

Commander, Companions and Ladies : 

In running down the line of subjects fitted to an occa- 
sion like this, it has occurred to me, sombre and coldly ju- 
dicial as it may at first appear, that nothing could be more 
appropriate than a plain, unpretentious talk about the 
government of our own country. 

Surely no more thoughtful, earnest representation of 
American citizenship could be assembled, here or else- 
where, than the one I am honored in greeting to-night. 
It is made up of men who have consecrated their 
lives to the profession of arms, for the protection and de- 
fense of our country and its institutions — of men who vol- 
unteered, from civil life, to place their lives between their 
country and enemies banded together for its destruction ; 
of mothers, wives and daughters whose country-love has 
been chastened by sacrifices, less conspicuous perhaps, but 
not less sacred than the offering laid by the soldier upon 
the altar of his country. 

Such an audience cannot be unmindful of the fact that 
the true value of a country must be measured by the merit 
of its government, and that governments are but the re- 
flection of the average and aggregate wisdom, integrity 
and culture of the people composing them ; the breadth of 
personal freedom and the measure. of legal restraint being 
determined, always, by the mental and moral condition of 
the populace. 

The two theories of government — and there are but 
two, the despotic and the democratic — spring from the 
logical necessities of the governed. If ignorant and im- 
moral, the government must be despotic; if cultured and 
moral, it 7)iay be democratic. 

I am deeply impressed with the thought — the fear — 
that we, as a people, are quite too careless in the study, 
and too wanting in knowledge of the genius, the pur- 



pose and prerogatives of our own government. Indeed, if 
my judgment is of any value, our free institutions require, 
and should command, the first and best thought of every 
man and woman who wears the crown and shares the 
blessing of citizenship. Not only should we give thought- 
ful heed to our duties and responsibilities, but the logic 
and ethics of citizenship should be the soul of parental Iut 
struction at the fireside, and the central study in the whole 
circle of popular education, from the first step in the com- 
mon school to the l^st in the university. Every pulpit 
should blossom and fruit in man's loyalty to man, as its 
first mission ; for no human being can live regardless of the 
rights of his neighbor and obedient to the laws of God. 
From the closet of every christian should go out a path of 
prayer fresh beaten, daily, with petitions for wisdom and 
patience to act well the part of a citizen-sovereign, in this 
wonderful problem of free government which has been di- 
vinely set for us to work out, 

I have said that there are but two theories, two sys- 
tems of government, and I may add that there never have 
been, never can be but the two — the despotic and the dem- 
ocratic. True it may be, that circumstances may combine 
to modify each of these in turn, but no power can ever 
assimilate them. They are set over against each other in 
an antagonism as old and as continuous as the existence 
of the human race. 

Despotism rests its claim upon an assumption that 
men are born unequal, dependent and without wisdom or 
capacity for self rule. It claims that liberty left to popu- 
lar protection must end in anarchy, and the tenure of life 
and property become a mockery. Hence, the governing 
wisdom must come from above and beyond the people; and 
kings rule by both Divine right and human necessity. 
This much conceded, how short and logical the next and 
final" step! — that rulers thus endowed with superior intel- 
ligence and ordained of God to rule, can do no wrong, and 



that to question the authority or the wisdom of such, is 
the essence of treason and infidelity. 

Every form of monarchial government, stripped of 
ingenious disguises, stands out a well-defined despoiism. 
Under them, knowledge is as worthless to the subject as 
wings to a caged eagle. Liberty of conscience and civil 
equality can not exist. Accident of birth is above fact of 
merit ; to obey, the sole duty of the subject ; to rule, the 
supreme right of the sovereign. Citizenship implies obed- 
ience without responsibility, and men are made parts of a 
machine moved by a power they neither see nor compre- 
hend. The limit of individual action is less than the nat- 
ural bounds of normal manhood, and training for citizen- 
ship necessarily becomes a dwarfing process, by which 
ambition is subdued, will crushed, and self-respect subor- 
dinated to respect for the reigning power. 

The subject of a despotism need not understand the 
underlying principles of law, inasmuch as he has no voice 
in making or executing laws, and few rights under them. 
He need not study political economy, nor trouble his mind 
about the laws of trade or the rules of commerce; his rela- 
tions to these being little above those of the weaver's shut- 
tle, the ship's hull, or the brick and mortar of the bank 
vault ; and, too often, he is relieved from the study of the 
Bible by an officious priesthood, which stands between him 
and his God, doling out the word of life under an assumed 
prerogative of Omnipotence. 

To such governments, popular intelligence is but 
another name for revolution. A cultivated, reliant self- 
assertive manhood, in the body of the people, will soon 
Overthrow a despotism, no matter how strongly it may be 
entrenched behind a throne, or deep rooted in the dogma 
of "divine right." The expansive power of a civilization 
springing from the generous soil of a free, christian fire- 
side, and fostered by the sunlight of popular education, is 



irresistible to tyrants. Tliey must finally yield to its force, 
and give way to the public will and judgment as the right- 
ful governing power. From this great fundamental truth 
springs a bright hued bow of promise to cheer the oppressed 
and downtrodden people of the earth. 

The theory and practice of democratic government 
rests upon the assumption of a state of facts directly oppo- 
site to the other. It claims that men are born free and 
equal before the law, with an inherent right to life, to lib- 
erty ,and the pursuit of happiness, and endowed with wisdom 
and ability ample for self-government. Therefore, all just 
powers of the government must rest upon the consent of 
the governed, which, in plain English, vests all the power 
of government in the governed themselves. It is true 
that, to clothe the subject with the purple and gold of sov- 
ereignty, and crown majority as monarch, involves a polit- 
ical paradox, and confers upon the citizen peculiar and 
anomalous duties and responsibilities. He becomes, with 
enfranchisement, at once a sovereign and a subject, the 
ruler and the ruled, and must be qualified to perform the 
functions of each in turn. He must be wise, as a law giver ; 
just, as a judge, and loyal as a subject. The tenure of life, 
the measure of liberty and the possibilities of happiness no 
longer depend upon the will of Kings, or the caprice of 
Emperors, but upon the wisdom and integrity of the popu- 
lace. 

The citizen, thus crowned, is not only charged with 
the duty of enacting -and executing laws, but of declaring 
war and concluding peace as well. His tongue is unfet- 
tered, his conscience unbound. He is born heir to the 
ages, endowed with all powers, charged with all duties and 
all responsibilities given of God for the exercise of man. 

This, companions and countrymen, is our government 
and these our privileges, duties and responsibilities. Look- 
ing them in the face, what wonder is it that wise, good 



men, hopeful men, become bewildered and distrust the sta- 
bility of popular judgment and public rectitude, when 
raised to such an altitude of power? Should we condemn 
those not grounded in a faith born of country-love, for 
looking upon our cherished government as an experiment, 
like those which have preceded it and failed? 

I am not here to illuminate your imaginations with 
forensic fireworks, nor to group for your pleasure the flow- 
ers of rhetoric. It is my purpose to lead you in the rugged 
pathway of truth, and feed you with the possibly unpala- 
table fruits of reason. I come to you with a line of thought, 
a cluster of suggestions, not less important for being unusual 
or unpopular in the gush of American oratory. 

We need not resort to the tedious process of reasoning 
to eliminate a truth already made patent by the experience 
of ages. There must be a preparatory training, an ele- 
mentary education, by which the masses are made familiar 
with the genius, prerogatives and powers of a representative 
government, or it will prove a failure. An elective fran- 
chise not clothed with intelligence, and sustained by integ- 
rity and justice in the individual elector, can secure to a 
people neither the blessings of peace nor the fruits of in- 
dustry, and will soon seek shelter under a strong, central- 
ized despotism, with irresponsible power in the ratio of the 
density and universality of its own ignorance and vice. 
It was in the light of a world's experience that the late 
Emperor Napoleon, in his work entitled "Napoleon's Ideas," 
laid it down as a political axiom that a Democracy based 
on universal suffrage necessarily and logically culminates 
in the election by the people of an Emperor or King, in 
order to gain the rest of public order and secure the fruits 
of peace. 

True, this is a Napoleonic, not an American, idea, 
and yet, if the words "ignorant and corrupt" were inter- 
polated, no one could question the Erajieror's conclusions; 



6 

for sui'ely, a Republic based on an ignorant and corrupt 
suffrage must culminate as he assumes it will. 

The French Re}niblic of 1793 was thus established, 
and for seven years waded through a sea of blood, to come 
out a military despotism on the other side. 

Again, in 1848, the same Nation set up a Republic 
upon a popular suffrage, with more than half those exer- 
cising it unable to read the names on the ballots cast by 
them into the electoral urns. At the end of four years 
these same brainless ballots remanded the government back 
to a military despotism, by an overwhelming majority. 

Spain, in the face of these examples, and unwarned by 
the failure of a half score Spanish Colonial Republics, 
which had arisen and fallen on this continent within the 
past fifty years, has lately passed through a like experience. 
Her ignorant, untrained suffrage fled from the Republic of 
a Castellar to the more tolerable despotism of a Bourbon, 
where it rests in comparative content and safety to-day. 

It is in no spirit of controversy that I recall a chapter 
of our own history painfully demonstrative of the great 
truth that republics cannot be built upon a foundation of 
ignorant suffrage, and command respect. 

The original States of our Union were united under a 
compact guaranteeing liberty and equality of citizenship, 
except where temporarily denied under the compromises of 
the Constitution. One section of these original States ad- 
hered to the conditions of the compact, and provided a 
system of education commensurate to their fulfillment. The 
other section clung to the institution of slavery, which con- 
verted them into despotic oligarchies, at once intolerant and 
brutal to the subjugated class, forgetting that chattelhood 
in man was utterly incompatible with the prime condition 
of a republic. The slave could not be educated, because 
with knowledge comes power to defend the right. The 
non-slave-holding whites could not command the means of 



an honorable subsistence and intelligent training of tlieir 
children without industry, and manual labor being the lot 
of slaves, work was a degradation too revolting for white 
poverty to contemplate. This antagonism between the 
government ordained by the constitution and that incident 
to slavery, made surrender of the former or rebellion in the 
interest of the latter, inevitable. 

The rebellion came — was unsuccessful, and the prob- 
lein of reconstruction had to be met. The civilization, 
made up of four million whites, 23 per cent of whom could 
neither read nor write, and three million citizenized blacks, 
illiterate almost without exception, was uufitted, disquali- 
fied for the duties and responsibilities of a government 
resting on an elective franchise. They were not only il- 
literate, but untrained in the essential ethics of a common 
citizenship. The whites had been taught to hate the doc- 
trine of human equality. They looked upon complexion 
as a patent of nobility, or fitness for chattelhood, according 
to the condition — free or slave — of the mother. The 
blacks, born to bondage, knew no law but that of obedience, 
no rule but that of submission to their masters, until sud- 
denly made their peers. 

By all historic precedent these States would have been 
turned over to military control. But this was too revolt- 
ing to our cherished traditions. We might, however, have 
accomplished the desired end by remanding them to the 
condition of Territories, until, under the fostering care of 
the general government, the slow but sure process of edu- 
cation and assimilation had fitted them for self-government. 
Thus prepared, they would have assumed their normal re- 
lations as free States of a Republican government much 
sooner than could otherwise be possible. 

But magnanimity and sympathy were stronger than 
precedent and reason, and we restored political and civil 
e'quality, and extended the elective franchise, without re- 
gard to color or previous condition. . 



8 

The result was precisely such as the logic of facts and 
the lessons of history had foretold. Elections were either 
a farce or a tragedy, according to the intensity of race an- 
tagonism, and the relative power of the contending forces. 
That they too often proved tragedies is attested by authen- 
ticated records of more than three thousand political mur- 
ders, and a multitude of kindred outrages, alike revolting 
to every theory of law, every sentiment of humanity. 

And now, that peace reigns, it is the peace of the 
grave, where the superior intelligence of the white minority 
has buried the political rights of an ignorant, helpless col- 
ored majority. 

I do not recall this painful chapter of our history to 
inveigh against the ruling class — the whites of the south. 
They are what the dogma of caste and a false political edu- 
cation made them, and precisely what the same conditions 
and training would have made of us. It was an incident 
of birthright, not of choice ; more a misfortune than a 
crime, commending them to the sympathy of those taught 
in a school of freedom, and trained in a higher code of po- 
litical morality. A wise statesmanship would have recog- 
nized that knowledge is not less a power than is ignorance 
weakness, and that the problem of reconstruction was the 
slow, tedious one of learning, not of law. It would not 
have been unmindful of the fact that no State, North or 
South, could secure order at home, respect abroad, or safe 
relations to sister States, with more than fifty per cent of 
its voting population unable to read their ballots or their 
Bibles. 

Whatever demagogues may say, or the unthinking be- 
lieve, all must gravitate at last to a knowledge of the great 
fundamental fact, that governing power must be lodged in 
the hands of culture and character — educated men, trained 
men, or liberty is lost in license, and law yields to anarchy. 



Intelligence rules ignorance always, ignorance governs in- 
telligence never. 

On this knowledge Lycurgus made education in Sparta 
compulsory, more than twenty-seven centuries ago ; impos- 
ing the condition, that children educated by the State 
should owe service and allegiance to the State instead of 
to parents. A few centuries later Solon made the educa- 
tion of every citizen of Athens compulsory, as a prime meas- 
ure of public safety. One of these countries was attempting 
a republic, the other a democracy. Hence, the recognition 
of education as an essential political factor. The same 
principle found recognition in the eighth century, in the 
Roman empire, when all parents, as a condition precedent 
to a participation in the government, were compelled to 
send their children to school, to the end that political pow- 
er should remain in educated hands. 

Conservative England, always boastful of the wisdom 
and steadiness of its imperial government, and outspoken 
in contempt for Republican experiments, is compelled to 
concede the ballot and a serai)lance of popular government 
as the education of her people extends, and the field of gen- 
eral intelligence broadens. This yielding to popular sov- 
ereignty is not from choice, but in obedience to the inexor- 
able logic of necessity. The ever-widening and surely- 
deepening current of popular education and self-reliant 
individuality, in England, is working a peaceful revolution 
which, at no distant day, will take the crown from the 
head and the sabre from the hand of the royal family, and 
put them on the head and in the hand of the more royal 
people. 

It is true that our Republic has stood the test of a 
century, and come safely through every conflict in forum 
and field. And yet, many things are to be accomplished 
before the permanency of our boasted political institutions 
becomes a demonstrated fact. If intelligence is the pro- 



10 

tecting shield of civil liberty and political equality, igno- 
rance is not less their peril. And we have now two million 
of enfranchised citizens unable to read or write. This mass 
oi illiteracy involves from three to fourteen per cent of the 
voting population of the northern, or free States, and from 
fourteen to fifty-seven per cent in the southern, or slave 
States. In nearly every northern State, with our ^boasted 
free school system, the number of illiterates is greater than 
their political majorities at State elections. Massachusetts 
has 32,000; Michigan, 19,000; Pennsylvania, 67,000; Il- 
linois, 45,000 ; New York, 78,000, and Ohio, 49,000. 

The time has come, and now is, when the Declaration 
of Independence should be amended by adding education 
to the list of inalienable rights. Let it read : "Life, educa- 
tion, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." 

Give us a system of education ordained of law, fitted 
to the training of youth for the duties and responsibilities 
of citizenship, and impossible of evasion by the child, or 
abridgment by parent or guardian. 

This inalienable education must be something more 
than intellectual development. The discipline of the mind 
as the chief end of education, must be repudiated. Mere 
mental culture must not command respect as a distinguish- 
ing mark of greatness, nor pretense of such attainments be 
allowed to pass for learning. The man who revels in the 
higher mathematics, in ignorance of the figures on a car- 
penter's square, or crucifies his mother tongue in boasting 
of his classical attainments, must be rated a charlatan. 

It is not learning's semblance, but learning's self, our 
country needs to make it peaceful, prosperous and perpet- 
ual. We must provide a school of elementary training 
for the development of all the faculties — moral, intellectual 
and physical — in a learning which will be a power in the 
hands of its possessors, for daily use ; a learning which 
blossoms and fruits in practical works ; a learning which 



11 

has the attributes of character as well as of knowledge, 
making it a contribution to the sum of public wisdom, and 
an element of strength and dignity to the State. It must 
embrace ethics as well as letters, teaching exact and rigid 
rules of right, and inculcating temperance, chastity and 
patience to earn a mastery of the true conditions of an 
honorable existence, as the distinguishing characteristics of 
a true manhood and an exalted civilization. 

To call enforced learning of this character, compulsory 
education, is as much a misnomer as would be the calling 
of life or liberty compulsory, because they are blessings 
given to us without right of denial by others, or alienation 
by ourselves. 

Bear with me in asking your attention to a strange 
and anomalous condition of our country. We hold an ex- 
alted position in the family of Nations, with influence upon 
the affairs of the world second to no other of the great 
powers of earth. And yet we have not drawn for ourselves 
even the outlines of a nationality. We are a people with 
no distinguishing quality in common, no identicalness of 
race, language or habit. We have been gathered from all 
quarters of the globe, speaking every tongue, creatures of 
all habits, believers in every religion, scoffers in every 
phase of unbelief, and bearing the impress of every national 
peculiarity, mental and physical, incident to the human 
race. The first crystal of a unified, harmonious civilization 
has not been formed, the first feature of homogeneousness 
in habit, tradition or religion, has not yet appeared upon 
the face of the Nation. 

It is idle to attempt a devvial of antagonism in thought, 
habit, hope, ambition and religion, amid such incongruous 
elements. It is true that we are, ap'parently , a united, har- 
monious people, but this is more appai^ent than real. There 
is, there can be, no real union of these conflicting elements 
until time and the inevitable laws of population have 



12 

assimilated, and brought forth a new type of man — an 
American nationality. Until this work is complete, there 
will be a contest for supremacy, each struggling to impress 
its own image on the rest. The shaping and final mastery 
in this work of assimilating all the old in the creation 
of a new nationality, is the crucible test which will finally 
determine the experiment of popular government for us, 
and for the ages as well. 

What shall this new civilization be? What the out- 
lines and filling up of this new Nationality ? Imagination 
never roamed in a field more fruitful of fancy , wisdom 
never delved in a mine more prolific of thought, than those 
opened to us by these questions. 

Let every Companion of the Loyal Legion, every lover 
of his country give earnest, practical thought to it, before 
concessions are made, or opportunities lost which may mar 
the result. 



